A Farewell To Arms – Ernest Hemingway, 1929 ★★★

Making the Case for a Subjective Classic

Some books carry associations that have nothing to do with their literary merits. So it is for me and A Farewell To Arms.

Ernest Hemingway’s sprawling tale of love and war was required reading in my final weeks of boarding school. For me, shellfire in Italy and a boozy convalescence became one with cinderblock dorm walls and muddy trails that stretched to and from my classes. Like Frederic Henry at mess hall I watched people I lived with vigorously rag on each other, sensing as he did that I would somehow come to love and miss these days, but wishing in that moment I was somewhere else.

Journey’s End – R. C. Sherriff, 1928 ★★★★

Where Poppies Blow

War is hell. A hell of a bore, for one thing. Imagine endless days sitting in a trench somewhere while the rain and muck and rats have at you, trying to think of anything to take your mind off the prospect of sudden, violent death. Maybe even getting numb from it after awhile.

World War I had a reputation for that, on account of the long-static lines of the Western Front and the work of writers who survived, men on both sides including R. C. Sherriff, who ten years after getting wounded in combat wrote a play about both the dying and the waiting.

The Zimmermann Telegram – Barbara Tuchman, 1958 ★★★

A Man, a Plan, a Telegram

The plan seemed perfect in its simplicity: Take out a prospective enemy in the middle of a global war without moving a single soldier or ship. What could go wrong?

For Imperial Germany in 1916, quite a lot. For the prospective enemy was the United States, the conflict World War I, and the plan used would prove just the lever to move a peace-loving American president to join in the carnage as an ally of Germany’s foes.

The Guns Of August – Barbara Tuchman, 1962 ★★★½

The Best-Laid Plans

Barbara Tuchman didn’t quite catapult history books into events, but she moved that ball forward in a big way. For several decades her heavy tomes about medieval warfare and Chinese diplomacy were best-sellers people lugged to the beach.

None had the impact of The Guns Of August, her 1962 account of the first month of World War I. It won the next year’s non-fiction Pulitzer and achieved legend status during the Cuban Missile Crisis. President Kennedy was said to quote from it often, tasking staff to read it as war with Russia loomed.